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SustainableJeroen writes "On October 6th, the 2013 World Solar Challenge will start. This year, 43 teams (more than ever before) from 24 countries around the world will compete in this biannual 3000 km road event, which runs from Darwin to Adelaide. In both 2009 and 2011, Tokai University (Japan), Nuon Solar Team (the Netherlands) and University of Michigan Solar Car Team (USA) finished in first, second and third position, respectively. Who will win this year? We'll know for sure on October 13th, the end of the event. Team details (photos, car specifications, links to websites) can be found here."

Or if you must have a car, you can go with a Tesla, which is mostly powered by self-satisfaction but also requires electricity, which you can at least arrange to buy from (appropriately) a wind farm, e.g. http://www.communityenergyinc.com/ [communityenergyinc.com].

I won't be impressed until it can run on bugs it collects along the way, can fly, is self replicating, genetically adaptive, intelligent, and ornamental. Then we have to call it a bird, because of prior art.

A road worthy class might be interesting eventually but we are not there. I don't think the technology exists yet to built something that do three thousand miles in a reasonable time span on solar alone exits yet.

Think of this more like you would look at an F1 event. Its designed to try out some new technologies and experiment with new ideas about how to build an efficient solar vehicle; and its a race to make it interesting, bring people and money in.

"A road worthy class might be interesting eventually but we are not there."

Actually we are there already:Solar-powered car from TU/e officially allowed on public roads:http://www.tue.nl/en/university/news-and-press/news/solar-powered-car-from-tue-officially-allowed-on-public-roads/

From the article:"Stella, the world’s first and only solar-powered family car, has been approved to use the public roads in the Netherlands by the Government Road Transport Agency (RDW). With this official approval, the team

There is the new cruiser class [worldsolarchallenge.org], where contestants are judged not on their speed but their practicality by a jury.

Setting clear price requirements is very difficult since man-hours can make up for costs of individual parts, and most of the teams consist of groups of students (10-30 each) working full-time for a year or more on just that one car. Either way, $10,000 is way below what you need for a serious solar car (you can easily spend that kind of money on the solar panels alone).

I haven't followed this race in a very long time though, I do remember GM's Sunraycer back in 1987. My question is: what has changed in the past twenty-six years? From a quick look on Wikipedia I see that the average speeds are higher but nothing like double what they were back when I was a kid. Is it safe to assume that the improvements made have been largely incremental? Are we talking about an ever so slightly more refined design every two years, better solar tech, better drag calculations?
Please don't

I see that the average speeds are higher but nothing like double what they were back when I was a kid

It's a public road with other traffic so the cars have to stick to a speed limit. It's also no Autobahn or US highway but instead a fairly cheap per km ordinary paved road.I don't know what speed the cars could do circling a racetrack but they are not on a racetrack so they have to stay under the speed limit.

Rather than forcing them to stick to the speed limit they should start introducing other factors that will slow the vehicles down. Things like introducing the additional mass of a passenger/navigator (ensuring driver/passenger mass is uniform across all vehicles by introducing weights to balance them out to a set minimum mass). Perhaps look at including some off bitumen back roads to test suspension (including energy recovery) and vehicle durability.

Checked on the web site after making the comment and the cruiser class (two person) seems very interesting and the way to go, the vehicles must achieve road registrable classification in the country of origin. So overnight recharge allowed to allow for lights, indicators. Definitely the class the incorporates greater overall design elements.

There have been quite a few rules changes since then, and a lot of them have been to make the race more difficult. A couple of the big rules are 1) drivers must be sitting up now instead of lying down, and 2) the area of solar cells on a car is limited to, I think, 3 square meters this year. I think the 3 square meter rule is new this past year or two, so even the two cars that I drove (I raced in the North American races back in 2009 and 2010) would not be legal since we had around 5-6 square meters

A new solar car is ready to be put to the test. A team of mechanical engineers from MIT is preparing their creation for Australia's World Solar Challenge. Eleanor was born in a dull basement underneath some labs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also known as MIT. But Eleanor is ready for a bright challenge as she's to compete in the 'World Solar Challenge' next September.
The solar challenge is a grueling 7-day, 3,000-kilometer car race across the Australian Outback. The race is a testing gr